


The Thing About Tony

by Queen_Fluffernutter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Music stuff, Other, Tony has a superpower after all, earworms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 18:02:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Fluffernutter/pseuds/Queen_Fluffernutter
Summary: Tony stark has a superpower after all - it's just that he doesn't want anyone to know because if they do, it might be the death of him.





	The Thing About Tony

The thing is, everyone is wrong when they say that Tony Stark doesn’t have any superpowers, because, he does. It’s just that he’s never bothered to tell anyone what they were because he himself hadn’t realized that they were, in fact, superpowers at all that he’d been using all this time. 

To say that Tony loved music, was an understatement. His daily activities somehow managed to revolve around some sort of beat or another, whether it was his self-proclaimed theme song or a brilliant classical piece, it was still there. At night, he had JARVIS programmed to play a subliminal beat that, had Pepper heard it, she would have been able to pick it out as his very own heartbeat. One could rightly suppose that it’s function was to control the chaos that was Anthony Edward Stark as much as one could control what was basically the human equivalent of a train wreck happening in a hurricane.

It soothed him, made all the parts flow back together, and, so, even as a small child, he began to equate certain melodies with certain events. For instance, whenever Howard Stark was in one of his uncharacteristically bubbly moods – presumably after having one of his experiments work exactly the way he had planned on paper – there was a trip to Merry-Go-Round. And that meant that if Howard was happy, then Tony would hear calliope music playing faintly in his head. This continued until the very day that Tony Stark found out that his parents were dead. 

When the news reached him, Tony had been in a bar with a few people that he loosely called his friends, though, in truth, they were no more than people he happened to know who probably just hung around to see if some of the genius that the Stark men were famous for would rub off on them. This girl he had been, for lack of a better term, “dating” had taken her last five dollars, fed it to the jukebox and played a selection of music that consisted of 24 plays of her favorite song (“Wicked Game” by Chris Issak, for the record) and one single play of Styx’s “Show Me the Way” somewhere in the midst of it to shake things up. (Truth be told, if Tony had had any say in what song by Styx she was going to stick into the playlist, he would have had preferred it to be “Mr Roboto” but it wasn’t his money, so he didn’t really have a say in what was being chosen. And, besides, what was going to happen when the song came on would have ruined one of his favorite guilty pleasure songs for him for the rest of his life, so it was a good thing he hadn’t been the one to be able to pick anyway.)

It had been during the verse that contained “I close my eyes and know there's peace in a world so filled with hatred that I wake up each morning and turn on the news to find we've so far to go and I keep on hoping for a sign, so afraid that I just won't know” that he heard his cell phone ring. He wasn’t going to get it at first, but he was so annoyed by the lack of actual entertainment that he welcomed the distraction. Since there was only a handful of people that knew that number, he supposed it as his mother calling to check up on him, yet again, despite the fact that he had assured her that he wasn’t going to anything dangerous while she and his father were away. And, it was in the very moment that he pushed the button to answer the call that he realized how wrong he had been. He wouldn’t have been annoyed to hear his mother’s voice. But, now, all he could hear whenever saw their faces hover in the subconscious memories that crept up on him when he wasn’t being careful was that horrible Styx verse. 

And it wasn’t just his parents that held melodic remembrance in Tony’s brain, oh no. It had started happening more and more when he met people. There was the first time that he’d been having an actual conversation with Obadiah Stane over the future of Stark Industries and the opening riffs to Metallica’s “Am I Evil” were tickling at his brain stem. He really should have listened, he often mused in hindsight, but at the time, he thought he was just tuning out the world around him like he had so many times. But it wasn’t. It was one of the times that Tony had used the superpower he had been gifted with.

The day he met Rhodey, he’d been humming “With A Little Help from My Friends“ all day and it had driven him almost crazy. But in the instant when he saw the man that would become one of his closest friends, the song not only stopped playing on a loop, but Tony could almost see the lyrics forming into James Rhodes facial features. He had blinked so rapidly that Rhodey admitted later that he had considered suggesting that Tony immediately get his brain scanned. Actually, he still jokes that maybe he should have pressed the matter harder, especially when Tony starts to talk about upgrades he’d like to do on the many mechanical suits that he has in his collection.

Happy was another time that Tony’s ability kicked in to clue him into what was going to happen between them. Tony wasn’t usually one to listen to the genre of music that he’d heard the second the former boxer’s face came into view. But, there it was. Bill Withers, loud as day in his mind’s ear. And not a moment too soon, either. He’d actually needed to lean on the man that would later become not only his bodyguard, but also his head of security, and, as it turned out, his friend. 

Again and again it happened. For Pepper, it was, well, almost sweet. Like, so uncharacteristically Tony Stark that it almost scared him. Like, sending him into a panic attack scared. Happy had seen the look that crossed his face and had instinctively looked in his pockets for the paper bag he kept handy for just these moments.

And, Tony, for all he was trying to hold it together, was standing, stuck still in his footing, wondering if he was really seeing the world in slow motion or if this was just another thing that he was going to have to deal with – a sort of side effect to the whole soundtrack that his cerebellum was determined to create. The woman – no, ethereal being - that was walking toward him – there was no way she could be real. 

“Happy,” Tony sighed, reaching out in a sort of helpless flail as he did so. “Can you pinch me? Actually, no, don’t…don’t do that. But, maybe…maybe you could answer this for me?”

Happy had nodded, his eyes never leaving his friend/boss’s face. 

“Is…uh…can you hear,” Tony inclined his head for a moment and pushed his pointer finger toward the speakers that were imbedded in the interior of Stark Tower. “What I mean…is ‘Endless Love’ playing right now?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Then, what is that? I can’t believe you can’t hear tha—is she walking in slow motion?”

His future with Pepper was sealed and he didn’t even realize it at the time. That’s how dangerous this actual superpower of Tony’s was – he couldn’t turn it off if he wanted to – and sometimes he did. But, lately, it had been an endless source of amusement for him. He had realized that what was going on was just as important as any other superpower that was housed within the walls of what was now the Avenger’s Tower. 

Clint? A song he’d heard a few times, but he really wasn’t sure where, but he was safe enough to hum it around the archer without him knowing what it was – Leapy Lee’s “Little Arrows”. 

Steve? “Goody Two Shoes” by Adam Ant. The title alone made it the perfect song for the former “Star Spangled Man with a Plan”.

Bruce? “Mad World” by Gary Jules. Tony knew it was a remake of a Tears for Fears song, but the slowness of this version and lack of synthesized sounds made it the perfect score for some reason.

Bucky? Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama I’m Coming Home”. Couldn’t go wrong with The Great Ozz.

Sam? This one was a bit of a mystery to Tony until he had caught Sam during one of his training sessions and it all clicked into place. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was the only thing that had the energy in it that was needed to keep up with the man as he went through his routine.

Hell, he even had one for Fury – even though it had no words, Tony still zoned out and heard it clearly whenever he was in the presence of the man with the eyepatch and the impossible job of wrangling all the misfits he personally knew – “In the Hall of the Mountain King” - because, let’s face it, no matter how much Tony tried to deny it, he was more than happy to let Fury tell him and the others what to do.

He’d had to look up some of the lyrics using the internet because, oddly, the songs he heard weren’t limited to those he knew. And he had to admit, all of those made sense to Tony on some level. But Natasha? The song he had heard in his head for her had both shocked him and made sense at the same time after knowing her history. Yeah, Natasha had been his favorite and he’d pass her in the hallways on purpose just to trigger it in his mind. And, looking at his watch, he realized he was due for his four o’clock “Accidental Brush with the Widow”. 

Tony straightened his collar and smiled to himself before striding to the elevator and pushing the button. When the doors finally opened, Tony wasn’t disappointed. 

Humming her tune in his head as he watched her walk by him and smiling, Natasha caught his eye with a frown. He wished he could share this with all of them, but mostly with her. She was always so caught up in acting the badass female that he thought it might be nice of her to hear how other people saw her sometimes. But he couldn’t, because, you see, Anthony Edward Stark doesn’t have a superpower – never has and never will.

“You okay, Stark?” Natasha asked as she headed towards the communal kitchen, her usual graceful stride carrying her the length of the hallway. 

Tony looked thoughtful for a moment and shared a smirk. “Yeah, just…I’m on my way to the workshop. Thought of a great upgrade.”  
And with that, he got on the elevator, the door closing. It was only a few seconds before he spoke. “JARVIS?”

“Sir?”

“Tiny Dancer – Elton John – mid-level volume.”

“Very good, sir.”

Tony sang along with every word.

**Author's Note:**

> I love music so much and it affects me on such a level that I thought it might be interesting to explore how that might work as a superpower.


End file.
